How can PM effectively identify stakeholders

Stakeholder collaboration starts with identifying the right people who can:

👉 Support you

👉 Contribute towards product's success

As a Product Manager, you should involve stakeholders at different levels:

👉 As a 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺

👉 Who are 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗱

👉 Who are to be 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱

How to effectively identify your stakeholders ?

Yesterday, I shared a post - Stakeholders contribute immensely towards Product Manager’s success. Here is how you can do it:

🎯 Identify

🔗 Align

📢 Inform

But even before that, it is most crucial to identify those stakeholders who can contribute towards PM’s success. More importantly, towards product’s success.

As a Product Manager, you should involve stakeholders at different levels:

👉 As a 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺

👉 Who are 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗱

👉 Who are to be 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱

But how to effectively identify stakeholders ?

There is a simple solution to this - Stakeholder Map

Here is what you should do:

Step 1 - Setup a meeting (40 - 60 minutes)

Name - Stakeholder Map

Agenda:

1. Icebreaker (5 min)

2. Introduce team (5 min)

3. Introduce the exercise (5 min)

4. Gather all stakeholders (10 min)

5. Move stakeholders to the map (30 min)

6. Feedback

Why ?

When starting a new project, it's important to identify who else has a stake in the outcome, whether that's someone directly invested in the project or people you have to work with in order to reach your goal. Identifying them early will help steer you in the right direction, give you a network to reach out for support and help prevent unforeseen roadblocks.

Stakeholder maps are a tried-and-true method for driving out project specifics:

• Who is involved in a project

• Who is invested in the outcome

• Who has right of refusal

• Who will support the team

• Who are the key decision makers

• Who the team should meet with to help get context

Stakeholder maps help to visually represent a user and their world while showing connections within a context, such as an organisation. They can help the team understand which parts of the organisation will be affected by what is built.

When ?

As early as possible, usually during kickoff.

Participants

Team, anticipated stakeholders

Outcome of meeting

A shared understanding of stakeholders involved so that teams can establish relationships, dive deeper where necessary and communicate appropriately.

What’s next

Start to build relationships with the stakeholders that you've identified. You can conduct interviews with key stakeholders to understand their involvement. Even just sending an introduction email, explaining who the team is and what they are doing, will help down the line when you need to ask for something. For the stakeholders that need to stay informed, it can be helpful to send out a weekly update email to provide visibility and a prompt for them to provide input if needed.

Step 2 - During the meeting

Gather all stakeholders - 10 minutes

This stage is to identify all the stakeholders who have any interest in your project's outcome. They are typically the members of a project team, project managers, executives, project sponsors, customers, and users. Stakeholders are invested in the project and will be affected by it at any point along the way, and their input can directly impact the outcome.

Move stakeholders to the map - 30 minutes

Understand how each stakeholder can help the team, how involved they should be and who to contact when things come up.

Feedback

From 0 to 4, how would you score this workshop given the time you invested? Add a Sticky Note in the number you selected and write some quick feedback to explain your rating.

Conclusion

Investing initially in identifying the right stakeholders will go a long way in your product lifecycle.

They key is to have the stakeholders who support you can make an impact to the product.

Remember:

As a Product Manager, you should involve stakeholders at different levels:

👉 As a 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺

👉 Who are 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗱

👉 Who are to be 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗱

Bonus - I have put together an article on the importance of stakeholders in PM’s and Product’s success. You can access it for free here.

Are you an aspiring Product Manager ? I recently created a small digital Product Wallet 👜 that contains the list of essentials ready to help you become a successful Product Manager. Refer here for more details.